The Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park, located in central Georgia, is one of the largest of its kind in Europe. It covers more than 85,000 hectares of native forest and sub-alpine and alpine meadows and is home to rare species of flora and fauna. The park is also the first national park in the Caucasus corresponding to international standards. Established in 1995, it became a member of the European Network of Protected Areas – Pan Park in 2007, guaranteeing the highest level of nature protection and sustainable development of tourism. Besides nature-based tourism, the park also offers environmental education to schools and interested groups and has established a visitor-oriented infrastructure.

As the brown bear and wolf are indicator species for wilderness, a well-established monitoring system for these animal species is essential for the park management. In 2011, GLEN interns developed a monitoring system that now needs to be tested. This means interns in 2012 will work on the field with experienced specialists and also in the office, enhancing database management and implementing GIS.

Interns will be required to look after any changes or improvements necessary with the monitoring system. They will also test the developed data management system (draft versions of databases) and make improvements where needed while analysing the collected data. Finally, interns will report outcomes of their data analysis to the staff and make presentations for all interested parties. Training the staff in usage of database management and GIS application will also be required. When necessary, they will as well provide help in raising financial support in the process of implementing the monitoring system.

For these tasks, interns will need knowledge about the animals (big carnivores), experience in fieldwork, as well as knowledge in GIS and database management. Interns are encouraged to bring their own computers, if possible, as the computer available on site will be a shared one.

The scheduled time for the internship is between August and October 2012.

Training and seminars prior to the internship will be held in English. The tandem will be formed by a Latvian participant and a German/Swiss participant.